It wasn’t real. It wasn’t actually there, in the beastly flesh. It was nothing more than a powerful and frightening psychic image that its actual, buried self had created to terrify us. But it was just what Josiah Walters had said it was. It was Satan. It was all the fears and sins of every religion embodied in one totally grotesque and horrible creature. It was the leering temptation that haunts you when you’re cruel or self-serving. It was the goat-like incarnation of lust and greed. It was the master of everything that crawled and crept and slithered.
